Five To Fifteen Years

I welcome the opportunity to share my thoughts with others, but there is still a great deal of control I give up with each contact with the "outside." I am currently serving a five to fifteen year sentence for sexually abusing my daughter. This is something that occurred over ten years ago. I have been in prison for ten years, and served over eight and a half years in the Federal Bureau of Prisons and was transferred to a state prison in November 2004.

I am able to live in my current environment only because at this point none of my fellow inmates have taken the initiative to check out my crimes. It is easy to have a friend on the outside look up any inmate and find out what his charges are. Still, I need to try to be anonymous and I ask that the state system I'm in not be named.

I'm not sure one can understand how complicated my life is. It's ironic that I'm currently well-liked by many of my fellow inmates, but that would change in a second if someone figured out my charges. The harassment would likely include having my belongings stolen, plenty of verbal abuse, and possibly physical attacks. In the last two weeks, we've had one inmate stabbed with a homemade weapon and he is now on life support in hospital. Another inmate was cut with a can top and needed over forty stitches to close the wound. These injuries were not related to their charges, to my knowledge, but it shows the level of violence that always simmers inside these walls. I should point out this is a "medium security" facility - the one level higher is called "maximum security," also known as a penitentiary.